How are things in Korea now. Daily life in North Korea of ​​ordinary people: reviews. Standard of living in North Korea, living conditions, life expectancy. Why disease manifests

Foreigners who visited one apartment on Changjong Street in the center of Pyongyang asked the owner:

How much is this apartment?
- I do not know.
- So how do you live in this apartment?
- It was given to me by the state.
- Is it free?
- Certainly!

The foreigners, opening their mouths in surprise, told the owner that in their country such an apartment could be bought for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Still doubtful, they asked again:

“How can you get such an apartment for free?! Maybe among your family members or relatives there are persons from the authorities or privileged circles?

And the owner replied:

"Most of the people who celebrated housewarming on this street are ordinary workers and employees."

However, this is too commonplace in our homeland, where one of the popular events is the free issuance of housing. In its towns and villages, ordinary people receive state-built apartments free of charge.

According to data in 2011, there were more than 7 million families in South Korea who did not have their own apartment. And of these, 680 thousand families, not having the strength to rent an apartment, drag out a miserable life in shacks and dugouts.

Due to the high price of an apartment, many Americans rent apartments or live in the open air, not daring to think about their home.

The well-appointed residential buildings built in various places in Pyongyang City, including Gwangbok Avenue, Thonyeer Avenue and Changjeong Street, clearly show the folk activities in our homeland.

In the capitalist countries, luxurious houses are built in the interests of a handful of privileged circles, so that ordinary working people cannot even think about them.

So why in our Motherland, allocating a lot of money, labor and building materials for housing construction, give apartments to ordinary people for free?

The Nigerian newspaper The Najirian Observer wrote:

“Public events in Korea are attracting the attention of the international community. This is explained by the fact that in it, cherishing the people, they pursue a policy in their interests.

Applause please!

So, as you understand, today we will walk around Pyongyang and see how ordinary workers live. As they say, we have no reason not to trust North Korean propaganda - they won't lie to us, will they?

I give you the street of the future, which was built for scientists. And now let's look at the street for ordinary workers - this is Changjong Street!

I must say right away that I have not been to North Korea and do not plan to. I am not very interested in walking around exemplary places surrounded by guides and Chekists. I am interested in real life, but today it is not available to a simple tourist. It remains to collect bit by bit videos and photos on the Internet and use them to gather an idea of ​​what is really happening in North Korea today.

So let's take a look at the new area!

01. Here it is!

“To transform Pyongyang into a splendid world city, a city of people armed with revolutionary views on the leader — such was the desire of President Kim Il Sung and Commander Kim Jong Il. The great Kim Jong Il took the initiative to demolish the old residential buildings in the area and build a new street on the occasion of the centenary of the great leader Kim Il Sung. He repeatedly got acquainted with the general plan for the improvement of the surroundings of the Mansudae hill and gave specific instructions.

04. Now the North Korean capital has the silhouette of a modern Asian city! "Changjong Street was built in June Juche 101 (2012), located in the central part of Pyongyang."

05. The main public transport of the city is a trolleybus. Electricity is much cheaper than diesel. Yes, and diesel will be more useful for tractors. There are practically no private cars on the streets. Pyongyang is probably the most cork-free capital in the world.

06. Houses are built on very similar projects.

07. The majority of the population travels by public transport. It is not enough, therefore, in all non-staged photographs of Pyongyang, there will always be crowds of people at bus stops. Please note that the roads are so wide and there are so few cars that people calmly cross the streets in any convenient place without fear of cars.

All this is very reminiscent of Soviet photographs of Moscow after the Stalinist reconstruction, when highways were cut through in place of the narrow streets of the historical center.

08. There are practically no private cars.

09. Dear Kim Jong-un, who embodied the noble love of the great giants for the people and the coming generation, has been here more than once. And at the end of May 2012, he inspected residential buildings, public buildings, a nursery, a kindergarten and a school.

10. And now new settlers are entering new houses! Pay attention to how happy they are, how they rush to get into their new apartments!

11. In the apartments they are shocked by the luxurious decoration. People are surprised by smooth walls, the presence of furniture. In fact, it is really a great happiness to see the furniture.

Usually all housewarming parties are held without furniture:

They sleep and eat on the floor. The kitchen would be the best.

12. Ordinary life

13. Since the new district is exemplary, it was beautifully illuminated

14. Electricity was spared

15. It's funny that the lights in the park are not on, but the area is glowing.

16. The street is flooded with light, almost like Hong Kong. And after that, who will say that there are problems with electricity in the country?

17. Well, yes, the lights almost do not burn on the street, but everything else glows!

18.

19.

20. So, 6 years ago, in 2012, propaganda reported:

“Kim Jong-un looked into the apartments on the highest floors, did not lose sight of anything, so that the new settlers would not feel inconvenience. Inspecting a number of public service buildings, he said that the first priority should be given to comfort, and then to architectural aesthetics. Here is one of the apartments. Let's take a close look at this photo. Right and left are the owners, they just got married, and the girl is expecting a baby.

21. The description of the photo says that this is a young family of workers. In the corner there is a TV set covered with a napkin, portraits of leaders on the wall. There are no curtains on the windows, and there are no heaters either.

22. On the next frame, a table already appears, and a napkin was removed from the TV and turned on!

23. The right pictures hang on the walls.

24. And now a new video has been released that shows us the same family that was shown 6 years ago! Let's see how they are doing!

25. At the beginning of the video, we are confirmed that the skyscrapers were built not for some kind of party workers, but for ordinary workers.

26. Here she is, our weaver. 6 years ago she was a teacher, but these are trifles. Now she is a weaver. Let's not quibble

27. Gorgeous evening views of Pyongyang

28. And now a young family goes to their home! As you remember, in 2012 the girl was pregnant, now they have a boy, everything is fine. Congratulations to the young! Satisfied girls follow the couple on the bridge

29. The girl in yellow does not lag behind throughout the entire route. After 6 years, the streets are still deserted, there are no markings, so you can cross anywhere

30. We enter the entrance

31. We take the elevator to the second floor! Pay attention to how luxurious the elevator is in the house! It is decorated with garlands, there is an armchair and a fan! Do you have this luxury in your home?

32. It's funny that the door to the apartment is not locked. A young working family just opens it. But there are alarm sensors on the door. Well, the usual thing is not to make a lock on the door, but to make an alarm.

33. As we remember, this is not just a house, this is the same house!

34. And here we are in the same room! Much has changed in the lives of ordinary North Korean workers in 6 years. First, there were curtains on the windows! Secondly, instead of a fan, now there are flowers. Well, a little change in the photos and diplomas on the walls.

35. Have you noticed a change?

36. Yes, there is a photo of this sofa from 2012

37. A young family of workers quickly changes clothes and starts watching TV! Now it's an LCD panel! A girl appears from somewhere. It looks like you can congratulate them on their second child.

38. Further, the operator proudly demonstrates other rooms. We are shown a bedroom in which for some reason there is no bed, but there is a refrigerator ... Again there are no heaters and even curtains.

39. Probably the bed is hiding in the closet!

40. There is still a kitchen! Kitchen with utensils, what a great achievement.

All. It remains only to rejoice for the young families working in North Korea.

Of course, I imagined an apartment a little differently, in which a young family with two children has been living for 6 years. Well, there, toys, books, cribs, a bookcase, a table. But these are trifles.

I continue to follow developments with interest.

About a year ago, we met Perm traveler Elnara Mansurov, who has been traveling around the world for several years. Now his notes have grown into a full-fledged travel project mishka.travel. Today FURFUR publishes a report on a trip to North Korea, in which Elnar told how he went to the mausoleum of Kim Il Sung, met Korean girls and was almost mistaken for a spy.

On the plane, we flew with Dennis Rodman, who, after staying with Kim Jong-un, decided to lead the DPRK national basketball team. Some kind of surrealism: I'm flying on the new AN-124 to Pyongyang, the stewardess brings a burger for lunch, and not far from me sits a big dark-skinned guy, whom I remember from the NBA game on the Sega console.

Much that is written in the media about North Korea is not true. Even the information that comes to television and the leading media in Russia is highly distorted. For example, according to some of them, on Independence Day on September 9, a military parade was held in Pyongyang, led personally by Kim Jong-un. In fact, there was no military equipment in the city that day, there are many holidays in this small country, and any military parade is a costly event, so on September 9 we had a militia labor army (this is something like an army in reserve) or a worker peasant red guard of the DPRK. I felt like I was in the chronicles of a war film, as if I were seeing off North Korean soldiers to the war. Hundreds of ZILs with people in uniform, girls with Kalashnikovs, nurses, a military band and one long black limousine with a portrait of great leaders on the roof. Koreans cry, launch into the sky Balloons and throw artificial flowers at the militia. There are no natural flowers in this country, at the airport we also observed how relatives were met with artificial flowers.

In the reports on visiting the DPRK, you can read about the cult of personality, the ban on taking pictures from the windows of the bus and the complete absence of cars on the roads. Times change, most of the facts become myths, but the truth is that in Pyongyang we even stood in a small traffic jam. On the roads there are cars mainly made in China, sometimes our UAZs and Priors. In the villages, you can find legendary trucks with a gas generator, which are heated with wood or coal. On the way to Wonsan, we met them several times, but the Koreans react quite zealously when you start taking pictures of them.

At the entrance, phones are no longer taken away - on the contrary, you can buy a SIM card from a local operator and call home, however, it is cheaper to call from a hotel.

It is still not allowed to take pictures of the military, military facilities, working people, as well as those places that the guide will tell you about (for example, inside a mausoleum or some kind of museum). Ordinary people can be photographed, but the guides ask not to scare the North Koreans, but to ask permission to photograph them. I travel around the world with a bear head, but I was forbidden to take photos in it against the background of the monument to two leaders. It is also forbidden to shoot sculptures, parodying the leaders, or cutting off parts of the bodies in the picture. They may be asked to be removed. Photographs with the head of a bear were still secretly taken.

In the DPRK, there is outrageous collectivism and informing, the system of denunciations works smoothly. Therefore, even if you escape from the hotel from the supervision of your guide, ordinary citizens will immediately hand you over. Near the restaurant after lunch, I went to the tram stop, tried to get acquainted with the locals, to chat; the first thing they did was run away. And the next day the guide asked: “Elnar, why did you try to communicate with Koreans? Realize that they rarely see tourists." That is, information about this has already been reported to her, and I had a friendly explanatory conversation.

It is still not allowed to take pictures of the military, military facilities, working people,
as well as those places that the guide will talk about (for example,
inside the mausoleum
some museum).

The driver of our bus was proud that in 25 years he had not been in a single accident. Probably because there were practically no cars on the roads in the last 25 years, and the roads themselves are six- or eight-lane "concrete". Now you can meet taxis on the streets of Pyongyang, and private traders on motorcycles are also starting to appear. It is quite possible that in ten years Pyongyang will not be a half-empty city, but will become an ordinary Asian noisy metropolis with all the exhaust gases and motorcycle taxi drivers screaming and arguing with each other because of the next client.

For me, the whole trip was a continuous movie with spies. And, I must say, I was not disappointed. I sometimes write into the voice recorder on my phone travel notes, but once the guide, after our conversation with her, saw the microphone icon on the phone and suspected me that I was recording all our conversations. I expected that when I left the country there would be a special interest in me from the special services, so I hid the memory cards with photos. But it worked out.

But Igor, a representative of the then unknown Ukrainian party "Udar", was less fortunate. He liked to joke about signs and slogans, jokingly translating them in his own way, the Koreans did not appreciate the humor and suspected him of knowing Korean language. During a visit to the mausoleum, the "Chekists" caught Igor and interrogated him on the topic "the real purpose of his visit to the DPRK."

We were fascinated by one Korean girl, her name was Un Ha, she was a trainee guide in another tour group. We asked our guide to organize a date with my single friend, jokes with jokes, but we managed to pull off the meeting. True, the date was four: in addition to the two of them, there were me and our guide. On another it is impossible. A friend took French wine (I think you can imagine how much it costs in a closed country), I took a beer to watch with pleasure. Korean women drank only water, embarrassment grew, we discussed general topics about whether they are on the Internet, whether they are going to visit Russia again, whether there are harmful tourists from our country. Everything looked like a pioneer camp and acquaintance with another detachment. After 20 minutes of boring monotonous conversation, our guide became ill and she went to the room, immediately followed by Un Ha.

That evening we invited our guide Zou to celebrate our departure, who in his age most resembled a representative of the secret services, since our guide, Comrade Pak, was, by all accounts, really a guide, which was confirmed by her appearance in other reports. Our third guide, trainee Kim, was very young, his knowledge of the language was noticeably worse, so Zou (we called him Jo or Choi) in our eyes was from the organs. That evening our "spy games" continued. After we decided that we were all brothers and went to our room for whiskey, the fun began. Every hotel room is supposed to be bugged, so Zou turned up the sound of the TV to talk to us frankly. He asked who in our group was “good” and who was “bad”, saying that Igor was obviously not here by chance. They talked about banned books, about the real state of affairs in Russia, and not about what their propaganda says. They exchanged banknotes with him as a souvenir, which, as it turned out later, went out of circulation.

We were fascinated by one Korean girl, her name was Un Ha, she was a trainee guide in another tour group. We asked our guide to arrange a date with my single friend.

North Korea has recently created its own time zone: Pyongyang Standard Time.
Beginning August 15, the country regained the time used on the Korean Peninsula prior to Japanese rule.

It costs $8,000 to defect from North Korea.
That's how much it takes to get to China.
The GDP per capita in North Korea is $1,800.

North Korean citizens born after the Korean War are on average 2 inches shorter than South Koreans.
This height difference is explained by the fact that 6 million North Koreans need food, and one third of the children are chronically malnourished.

North Korea claims to have a literacy rate of 100%.
The CIA says literate people in North Korea are those who, aged 15 or older, can read and write.

There are 28 state-approved haircuts.
Women are allowed to choose from 14 styles.
Men "are forbidden to have hair longer than 5 cm, while the hair of the elderly may be longer than 7 cm (3 inches).

Bill Gates is estimated to be worth five times as much as North Korea's entire GDP.
The estimated net worth of Bill Gates is $79500000000.
The GDP of North Korea is estimated at $15450000000.

The North Korean football team scored a goal against Brazil at the 2010 World Cup.
But the match was still lost with a score of 2:1.

If Pyongyang were a US city, it would be the 4th most populated city.
The population of Pyongyang is 2 million 843 thousand people.
This is more than in the fourth largest city in the US, Houston (2.23 million)

North Korea is approximately the size of the US state of Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania - 119.283 square kilometers.
North Korea - 120,538 square kilometers.

Less than 20% of the DPRK's land is arable.

It's about the size of New Jersey.
Only 19.5% of North Korea's land is arable.
It's 8,800 square miles.

Number of people ready to military service in North Korea, 2.5 times the population of Norway.
This is 6.515 million men and 6.418 million women.
It turns out 12.933 million military personnel.
The population of Norway is about 5.1 million.

Only 2.83% of roads in North Korea are paved.
Everything in the DPRK has 25,554 kilometers of roads, but only 724 kilometers are paved.

Qatar's GDP per capita is 51 times greater than North Korea's GDP per capita.
At $92,400, Qatar's GDP per capita was the highest in the world in 2014.
North Korea's GDP per capita was estimated to be $1,800 in 2013.

North Korea has been named the most corrupt country.
In the annual Corruption Perceptions Index for 2014, North Korea was named the most corrupt country.
The scores given to 174 countries in assessing corruption range from 0 (very high level corruption) up to 100 (no corruption).
North Korea received 8 points.

The late Kim Jong Il's annual consumption of cognac was 800 times the annual income of the average Korean in the DPRK.
Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un's father, reportedly spent £700,000 on a Hennessy every year. It's about $1.2 million.
The median annual income in North Korea is estimated to be between $1,000 and $2,000.

"The last few months have been a time of mass flight of North Korean diplomats, foreign trade workers and medium-sized officials. They have not run in such numbers for 60 years."
http://tttkkk.livejournal.com/298199.html

“Most likely, these escapes are a somewhat belated reaction to the “Jang Song-taek case” and the executions of generals, because in such quantities as in the last 2-3 years, the big authorities in the DPRK have not been shot for 60 years either. At the same time, the Supreme Leader , it seems, does not even have special respect for the families and descendants of the Manchurian partisans, who from 1958-60 constituted the country's hereditary elite and were practically inviolable (as a rule, it is impossible to shoot, to demote and send to the village for labor re-education - you can , but in most cases - with subsequent rehabilitation and return to approximately the previous level).
Of course, there was again talk that "the regime is on the verge of collapse."

However, Andrey Lankov, who wrote this in his blog tttkkk , being a specialist on the DPRK, is skeptical about such rumors.
He adds: "... in the fear of God, the Young Marshal keeps the elite, and its very top, and the people, as well as the lower-middle strata of the elite, including new business, now live by our standards quite badly, but still better than has ever lived at all, and therefore associates considerable hopes with the new Kim for a further improvement in the situation.

Last time I also wrote about one of the eastern countries:. And about North Korea here on the site. Read more.

Human society is constantly experimenting - how to arrange it in such a way that most of its members are as comfortable as possible.

From the outside, this probably looks like the attempts of a rheumatic fat man to get comfortable on a flimsy couch with sharp corners: no matter how the poor fellow turns, he will certainly pinch something for himself, then serve time.

Not to express deep respect for the image of the leader is to endanger not only yourself, but also your entire family.

Some particularly desperate experiments were costly. Take, for example, the 20th century. The entire planet was a gigantic training ground where two systems collided in rivalry. Society is against individuality, totalitarianism is against democracy, order is against chaos. Won, as we know, chaos, which is not surprising. You know, it takes a lot of effort to spoil the chaos, while destroying the most ideal order can be done with one well-turned bowl of chili.

Order does not tolerate mistakes, but chaos ... chaos feeds on them.

The love of freedom is a vile quality that interferes with orderly happiness

The demonstrative defeat took place on two experimental sites. Two countries were taken: one in Europe, the second in Asia. Germany and Korea were carefully divided in half and in both cases the market, electivity, freedom of speech and individual rights were created in one half, while the other half was ordered to build an ideally fair and well-organized social system in which the individual has the only right - to serve the common good.

However, the German experiment was unsuccessful from the very beginning. The cultural traditions of the freedom-loving Germans were not completely destroyed even by Hitler - where is Honecker! Yes, and it is difficult to create a socialist society right in the middle of the swamp of decaying capitalism. It is not surprising that the GDR, no matter how much strength and means were poured in, did not demonstrate any brilliant success, raised the most miserable economy, and its inhabitants, instead of being filled with a competitive spirit, preferred to run to their Western relatives, disguising themselves at the border under the contents of suitcases.

The Korean site promised great success. Still, the Asian mentality is historically more disposed towards subjugation, total control, and even more so when it comes to Koreans, who have lived under the Japanese protectorate for almost half a century and have long forgotten all freedoms.

Juche forever

Kim Il Sung at the beginning of his reign.

After a series of rather bloody political upheavals, the former captain of the Soviet Army, Kim Il Sung, became practically the sole ruler of the DPRK. Once he was a partisan who fought against the Japanese occupation, then, like many Korean communists, he ended up in the USSR and returned to his homeland in 1945 - to build new order. Knowing the Stalinist regime well, he managed to recreate it in Korea, and the copy surpassed the original in many ways.

The entire population of the country was divided into 51 groups according to social origin and degree of loyalty to the new regime. Moreover, unlike the USSR, it was not even hushed up that the very fact of your birth in the “wrong” family could be a crime: for more than half a century, exiles and camps here officially send not only criminals, but also all members of their families, including minors children. The main ideology of the state was the "Juche idea", which, with some stretch, can be translated as "reliance on one's own strength." The essence of ideology is reduced to the following provisions.

North Korea is the greatest country in the world. Very good. All other countries are bad. There are very bad ones, and there are inferior ones who are enslaved by very bad ones. There are other countries that are not that bad, but also bad. For example, China and the USSR. They took the path of communism, but they perverted it, and this is wrong.

The characteristic features of a Caucasian are always signs of an enemy.

Only the North Koreans live happily, all other nations eke out a miserable existence. The most unfortunate country in the world is South Korea. It has been taken over by the damned imperialist bastards, and all South Koreans are divided into two categories: jackals, vile servants of the regime, and oppressed pathetic beggars who are too cowardly to drive the Americans away.

Most great person in the world - the great leader Kim Il Sung *. He liberated the country and drove out the damned Japanese. He is the wisest man on earth. He is a living god. That is, it is already inanimate now, but it does not matter, because it is eternally alive. Everything you have, Kim Il Sung gave you. The second great man is the son of the great leader Kim Il Sung, the beloved leader Kim Jong Il. The third is the current master of the DPRK, the grandson of the great leader, the brilliant comrade Kim Jong-un. We express our love for Kim Il Sung with hard work. We love to work. We also love to learn the Juche idea.

• By the way, for this phrase in Korea we would be exiled to a camp. Because Koreans are taught from kindergarten that the name of the great leader Kim Il Sung should come at the beginning of a sentence. Damn, this one would also be exiled ...

We North Koreans are great happy people. Hooray!

magic levers

Kim Il Sung and his closest assistants were, of course, crocodiles. But these crocodiles had good intentions. They really tried to create a perfectly happy society. When is a person happy? From the point of view of the theory of order, a person is happy when he takes his place, knows exactly what to do, and is satisfied with the existing state of affairs. Unfortunately, the one who created people made many mistakes in his creation. For example, he put in us a craving for freedom, independence, adventurism, risk, as well as self-esteem, the desire to express our thoughts aloud.

All these vile human qualities interfered with the state of complete, orderly happiness. But Kim Il Sung knew well what levers could be used to control a person. These levers - love, fear, ignorance and control - are fully involved in Korean ideology. That is, in all other ideologies, they are also involved little by little, but no one can keep up with the Koreans here.

Ignorance

Until the beginning of the 80s, televisions in the country were distributed only according to party lists.

Any unofficial information in the country is completely illegal. There is no access to any foreign newspapers and magazines. There is practically no literature as such, except for the officially approved creations of contemporary North Korean writers, which by and large amount to praise of the Juche idea and the great leader.

Moreover, even North Korean newspapers cannot be stored here for too long: according to A.N. Lankov, one of the few experts on the DPRK, it is almost impossible to get a fifteen-year-old newspaper even in a special depository. Still would! The policy of the party sometimes has to change, and there is no need for the layman to follow these fluctuations.

Koreans have radios, but each unit must be sealed in the workshop so that it can only pick up a few state radio channels. For keeping an unsealed receiver at home, you immediately go to the camp, and together with the whole family.

There are televisions, but the cost of a device made in Taiwan or Russia, but with a Korean brand stuck on top of the manufacturer's mark, is equal to about a five-year salary of an employee. So few people can watch TV, two state-owned channels, especially when you consider that electricity in residential buildings is turned on for only a few hours a day. However, there is nothing to see there, unless, of course, you count the hymns to the leader, children's parades in honor of the leader and monstrous cartoons about the fact that you need to study well in order to fight well against the damned imperialists later.

North Koreans, of course, do not go abroad, except for a tiny layer of representatives of the party elite. Some specialists can use Internet access with special permissions - several institutions have computers connected to the Network. But in order to sit down for them, a scientist needs to have a bunch of passes, and any visit to any site, of course, is registered, and then carefully studied by the security service.

Luxury housing for the elite. There is even a sewage system and elevators work in the mornings!

In the world of official information, fabulous lies are being created. What they say in the news is not just a distortion of reality - it has nothing to do with it. Do you know that the average American ration does not exceed 300 grams of cereal per day? At the same time, they do not have rations as such, they must earn their three hundred grams of corn at the factory, where they are beaten by the police, so that the Americans work better.

Lankov gives a charming example from a North Korean textbook for the third grade: “A South Korean boy donated a liter of blood for American soldiers to save his dying sister from starvation. With this money, he bought a rice cake for his sister. How many liters of blood must he donate so that he, an unemployed mother and an old grandmother also get half a cake?

The North Korean knows practically nothing about the world around him, he knows neither the past nor the future, and even the exact sciences in the local schools and institutes are taught with the distortions required by the official ideology. Of course, one has to pay for such an information vacuum with a fantastically low level of science and culture. But it's worth it.

Love

North Korean has little to no idea of ​​the real world

Love brings happiness, and this, by the way, is very good if you force a person to love what is needed. The North Korean loves his leader and his country, and they help him in every possible way. Every adult Korean is required to wear a badge with a portrait of Kim Il Sung on his lapel; in every house, institution, in every apartment there should be a portrait of the leader. The portrait should be cleaned daily with a brush and wiped with a dry cloth. So, for this brush there is a special box, which takes pride of place in the apartment. On the wall on which the portrait hangs, there should be nothing else, no patterns or pictures - this is disrespectful. For damage to the portrait, even if unintentional, until the seventies, execution was supposed, in the eighties it could already get by with exile.

The eleven-hour working day of a North Korean begins and ends daily with half-hour political information, which talks about how good it is to live in the DPRK and how great and beautiful the leaders of the world's greatest country are. On Sunday, the only non-working day, colleagues are supposed to meet together to once again discuss the Juche idea.

The most important school subject is the study of the biography of Kim Il Sung. Each kindergarten, for example, has a carefully guarded model of the leader’s native village, and the children are obliged to show without hesitation under which tree “the great leader at the age of five thought about the fate of mankind”, and where “he trained his body with sports and hardening to fight Japanese invaders. There is not a single song in the country that does not contain the name of the leader.

The control

All young people in the country serve in the army. There are simply no young people on the streets.

Control over the state of minds of the citizens of the DPRK is carried out by the MTF and the MPS, or the Ministry of State Protection and the Ministry of Public Security. Moreover, the MTF is in charge of ideology and deals only with serious political misdeeds of the inhabitants, and the usual control over the life of Koreans is under the jurisdiction of the MSS. It is the MOB patrols that raid apartments for their political decency and collect denunciations of citizens against each other.

But, of course, no ministries would be enough for a vigilant vigil, so the country has created a system of "inminbans". Any housing in the DPRK is included in one or another inminban - usually twenty, thirty, rarely forty families. Each inminban has a headman - a person responsible for everything that happens in the cell. On a weekly basis, the head of the inminban is obliged to report to the representative of the Ministry of Defense on what is happening in the area entrusted to him, whether there is anything suspicious, whether anyone has uttered sedition, whether there is any unregistered radio equipment. The headman of the inminban has the right to enter any apartment at any time of the day or night; not letting him in is a crime.

Every person who has come to a house or apartment for more than a few hours must register with the headman, especially if he intends to stay overnight. The owners of the apartment and the guest must provide the headman with a written explanation of the reason for the overnight stay. If unaccounted guests are found in the house during the MOB raid, not only the owners of the apartment, but also the headman will go to the special settlement. In especially obvious cases of sedition, responsibility can lie on all members of the inminban at once - for non-information. For example, for an unauthorized visit of a foreigner to the house of a Korean, several dozen families may end up in the camp at once if they saw him, but concealed the information.

Traffic jams in a country where there is no private transport is a rare phenomenon.

However, unrecorded guests in Korea are rare. The fact is that moving from city to city and from village to village here is possible only with special passes, which the elders of the inminbans receive in the MOB. Such permits can be expected for months. And in Pyongyang, for example, no one can go just like that: from other regions they are allowed into the capital only on official business.

Fear

The DPRK is ready to fight against the imperialist vermin with machine guns, calculators and volumes of Juche.

According to human rights organizations, approximately 15 percent of all North Koreans live in camps and special settlements.

There are regimes of varying severity, but usually these are simply areas surrounded by barbed wire under voltage, where prisoners live in dugouts and shacks. In strict regimes, women, men and children are kept separately, in ordinary regimes, families are not forbidden to live together. Prisoners cultivate the land or work in factories. The working day here lasts 18 hours, all free time is devoted to sleep.

The biggest problem in the camp is hunger. A defector to South Korea, Kang Chol-hwan, who managed to escape from the camp and get out of the country, testifies that the dietary norm for an adult camp resident was 290 grams of millet or corn per day. Prisoners eat rats, mice and frogs - this is a rare delicacy, a rat corpse is of great value here. Mortality reaches about 30 percent in the first five years due to starvation, exhaustion and beatings.

Also a popular measure for political criminals (however, as well as for criminals) is the death penalty. It is automatically applied when it comes to such serious violations as disrespectful words addressed to the great leader. The death penalty is carried out in public, by execution. They lead excursions of high school students and students, so that young people get the right idea of ​​what is good and what is bad.

This is how they lived

Portraits of precious leaders hang even in the subway, in every carriage.

The life of a North Korean who has not yet been convicted, however, cannot be called raspberry either. As a child, he spends almost all his free time in kindergarten and school, since his parents have no time to sit with him: they are always at work. At seventeen, he is drafted into the army, where he serves for ten years (for women, the service life is reduced to eight). Only after the army can he go to college, and also get married (marriage is prohibited for men under 27 and women under 25).

He lives in a tiny apartment, 18 meters of total area here is a very comfortable home for a family. If he is not a resident of Pyongyang, then with a probability of 99 percent he does not have any water supply or sewerage in his house, even in cities there are water heaters and wooden toilets in front of apartment buildings.

He eats meat and sweets four times a year, on national holidays, when coupons for these types of food are distributed to residents. Usually, he feeds on rice, corn and millet, which he receives on cards at the rate of 500–600 grams per adult in “well-fed” years. Once a year, he is allowed to get 80 kilograms of cabbage on cards to pickle it. A small free market has sprung up here in recent years, but the cost of a skinny chicken is equal to a month's salary of an employee. Party officials, however, eat quite decently: they receive food from special distributors and differ from the very lean other population in pleasant fullness.

Almost all women cut their hair short and do a perm, as the great leader once said that such a hairstyle suits Korean women very much. Now wearing a different hairstyle is like signing your own disloyalty. Long hair in men is strictly prohibited, for a haircut longer than five centimeters they can be arrested.

Experiment results

Parade children allowed to be shown to foreigners from a privileged Pyongyang kindergarten.

Deplorable. Poverty, a practically non-functioning economy, population decline - all these signs of a failed social experience got out of hand during Kim Il Sung's lifetime. In the nineties, a real famine came to the country, caused by drought and the cessation of food supplies from the collapsed USSR.

Pyongyang tried to hush up the true scope of the catastrophe, but, according to experts who studied, among other things, satellite imagery, about two million people died of starvation in these years, that is, every tenth Korean died. Despite the fact that the DPRK was a rogue state that committed nuclear blackmail, the world community began to supply humanitarian aid there, which it is still doing.

Love for the leader helps not to go crazy - this is the state version of the "Stockholm syndrome"

Kim Il Sung passed away in 1994, and since then the regime has been creaking especially loudly. Nevertheless, nothing fundamentally changes, except for some market liberalization. There are signs that North Korea's party elite is ready to give up the country in exchange for personal security guarantees and Swiss bank accounts.

But now South Korea does not immediately express readiness for unification and forgiveness: after all, taking on board 20 million people who are not adapted to modern life is a risky business. Engineers who have never seen a computer; peasants who know how to cook grass perfectly, but are unfamiliar with the basics of modern agriculture; civil servants who know the Juche formulas by heart, but have no idea what a toilet looks like... Sociologists predict social upheavals, stockbrokers predict a St. Vitt dance on the stock exchanges, ordinary South Koreans reasonably fear a sharp decline in living standards.

Even in a store for foreigners, where Koreans are not allowed to enter, the assortment of goods does not shine with variety.

So the DPRK still exists - a crumbling monument to a great social experiment, which once again showed that freedom, despite all its untidiness, is perhaps the only path humanity can take.

Half country: historical background

Kim Il Sung

In 1945, Soviet and American troops occupied Korea, thus freeing it from Japanese occupation. The country was divided along the 38th parallel: the north went to the USSR, the south - to the USA. Some time was spent trying to agree on the unification of the country back, but since the partners had different views on everything, no consensus, of course, was reached and in 1948 the formation of two Koreas was officially announced. It cannot be said that the parties surrendered like this, without effort. In 1950, the Korean War began, a little like World War III. From the north, the USSR, China and the hastily formed North Korean army fought, the honor of the southerners was defended by the United States, Great Britain and the Philippines, and, among other things, UN peacekeeping forces traveled back and forth in Korea, which put sticks in the wheels of both. All in all, it was pretty hectic.

In 1953 the war ended. True, no agreements were signed, and formally both Koreas continued to remain in a state of war. The North Koreans call this war the "Patriotic Liberation War", while the South Koreans call it the "June 25 Incident". Quite a characteristic difference in terms.

In the end, the division along the 38th parallel remained in place. Around the border, the parties formed the so-called "demilitarized zone" - an area that is still stuffed with uncleared mines and remnants of military equipment: the war is not officially over. During the war, about a million Chinese died, two million South and North Koreans each, 54,000 Americans, 5,000 British, 315 soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army.

After the war, the United States brought order to South Korea: they took control of the government, banned the shooting of communists without trial or investigation, built military bases and poured money into the economy, so that South Korea quickly became one of the richest and most successful Asian states. Much more interesting things began in North Korea.

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North Korean stalls

The life of ordinary Koreans in the DPRK is protected from strangers, like a military secret. Journalists can only look at her from a safe distance - through the glass from the bus. And breaking through this glass is an incredibly difficult task. You cannot go to the city on your own: only with a guide, only by agreement, but there is no agreement. It took five days to persuade the escorts to take a ride to the center.

Taxis go to the center. Drivers are unspeakably glad to passengers - almost no one uses their services at the hotel. It is impossible for a foreigner to order a taxi in North Korea. They are taken to a shopping center on Kwang Bo Avenue - something like Novy Arbat in Moscow. The store is special - there are two red signs above the entrance. Kim Jong Il was here twice and Kim Jong Un came once. The shopping center resembles a typical Soviet Central Department Store: a three-story concrete cube with tall windows.

Inside, the atmosphere is like in the main department store of a small Russian city. There is a supermarket on the ground floor. There is a line at the checkout. There are many people, maybe even unnaturally many. Everyone is actively filling large carts with groceries.

Looking at the prices: a kilogram of pork 22,500 won, chicken 17,500 won, rice 6,700 won, vodka 4,900 won. If you remove a couple of zeros, then the prices in North Korea are almost the same as in Russia, only vodka is cheaper. Prices in North Korea are generally a strange story. The minimum wage for a worker is 1,500 won. A pack of instant noodles costs 6,900 won.

How so? I ask the translator.

He is silent for a long time.

Consider it so that we simply forgot about two zeros. Thinking, he replies.

local money

And in terms of prices, the official life of the DPRK does not get along with the real one. Won for foreigners: 1 dollar - 100 won, and the real rate is 8900 won per dollar. You can illustrate an example on a bottle of a North Korean energy drink - this is a non-carbonated ginseng decoction. In a hotel and in a store, it costs completely different money.

Local residents look at the prices in the store through the sight of the denomination. That is, subtract two zeros from the price tag. Or rather, adding two zeros to the salary. With this approach, the situation with salaries and prices is more or less normalized. And either noodles cost 69 won instead of 6900. Or the minimum wage for a worker is not 1,500 won, but 150,000 won, about $17. The question remains: who and what buys food carts in the shopping center. It looks like not workers and definitely not foreigners.

Foreigners in the DPRK do not use the local won currency. In the hotel, although prices are indicated in wons, you can pay in dollars, euros or yuan. Moreover, there may be such a situation that you pay in euros, and you receive change in Chinese money. North Korean money is banned. In souvenir shops you can buy old-style wons from 1990. Real wons are hard to find - but possible.

They differ only in the aged Kim Il Sung.

However, real money from the DPRK is of little use to a foreigner - sellers simply will not accept it. And it is forbidden to take national money out of the country.

Colorful dresses are sold on the second floor of the mall. On the third, the parents lined up in a tight formation at the children's play corner. The kids go down the slides and play with balls. Parents take pictures with their phones. The phones are different, quite expensive mobile phones of a well-known Chinese brand flicker in the hands a couple of times. And once I notice a phone that looks like a South Korean flagship. However, the DPRK knows how to surprise and mislead, and sometimes strange things happen - on an excursion to the red corner of a cosmetology factory, a modest guide suddenly flashes in his hands, it seems, an apple phone of the latest model. But it is worth taking a closer look - no, it seemed to be a Chinese device similar to it.

On the top floor there is a row of cafes typical for shopping malls: visitors eat burgers, potatoes, Chinese noodles, drink Taedongan light draft beer - one variety, no alternative. But filming is not allowed. Having enjoyed the abundance of people, we go out into the street.

Pyongyang on style

On the sidewalk, as if by chance, a new Lada is parked. Domestic cars are a rarity for the DPRK. Is it a coincidence - or the car was put here specifically for the guests.

People are walking along the street: many pioneers and pensioners. Passers-by are not afraid of video filming. A man and a woman, in their 40s, are holding a little girl by the hand. They say they are walking with their daughter. Koreans marry late - not earlier than 25-30 years.

A cyclist wearing black glasses and a khaki shirt drives by. Pass girls in long skirts. Girls in North Korea are banned from wearing miniskirts and skimpy outfits. The streets of Pyongyang are guarded by "fashion patrols". Elderly ladies have the right to catch fashionistas-violators and hand them over to the police. The only truly bright detail in the wardrobe of Korean women is a sun umbrella. They can even be garishly colorful.

Korean women love cosmetics. But basically it's not makeup, but skin care products. As elsewhere in Asia, face whitening is in vogue here. Cosmetics are made in Pyongyang. And the government is watching closely.

In the depths of the main cosmetics factory in Pyongyang, there is a secret rack. A hundred bottles and bottles: Italian shadows, Austrian shampoos, French creams and perfumes. "Forbidden", which you cannot buy in the country, is sent to the factory personally by Kim Jong-un. He demands that Korean cosmetics and perfumers take their cue from Western brands.

Men in Korea wear gray, black and khaki more often. Bright outfits are rare. In general, the fashion is the same. There are no those who clearly oppose themselves to others. Even jeans are illegal, only black or gray trousers. Shorts on the street are also not welcome. And a man with piercings, tattoos, dyed or long hair is impossible in the DPRK. Decorations interfere with building a brighter future.

Other children

Another thing is North Korean children. Little residents of the DPRK do not look like boring adults. They wear all the colors of the rainbow. The girls are wearing pink dresses. The boys are wearing ripped jeans. Or a T-shirt with not a portrait of Kim Jong Il, but an American Batman badge. The children look like they have escaped from another world. They even talk about something else.

What do you like most about North Korea? - I ask the kid with Batman on the jacket. And I'm waiting to hear the names of the leaders.

The boy looks at me from under his brows, embarrassed, but suddenly smiles.

Toys and walk! - He says a little confused.

Koreans explain why kids look so bright and adults look so insipid. Toddlers do not impose serious requirements. Until school age, they can dress in anything. But from the first grade, children are taught to live the right life and explain how everything in the world works. Rules of behavior, way of thinking and adult dress code change their lives.

street life

There is a stall at the mall. Koreans buy DVDs with films - there are new items from the DPRK. There is a story about partisans, and a drama about an innovator in production, and a lyrical comedy about a girl who became a tour guide at the museum named after the great Kim Il Sung. DVD players are very popular in North Korea.

But flash drives with films banned by the party are an article. For example, South Korean TV series fall under the article. Of course, ordinary Koreans find such films and watch them on the sly. But the government is fighting it. And gradually transfers local computers to the North Korean analogue of the Linux operating system with its own code. This is so that third-party media cannot be played.

Snacks are sold at a nearby stall.

These buns are bought by workers during the break, - the saleswoman happily reports and holds out a bag of cakes resembling portions of shortbread cookies with jam.

Everything local, - she adds and shows the barcode on the package "86" - is made in the DPRK. On the counter is "pesot" - popular home-made pies, shaped like khinkali, but with cabbage inside.

The tram is coming to a stop. He is surrounded by a crowd of passengers. Behind the stop is a bicycle rental. In some ways, it is similar to Moscow.

One minute - 20 won. You can take a bike with such a token, - a pretty girl in the window explains the conditions to me.

Having said this, she takes out a thick notebook. And hands it to my translator. He writes in a notebook. Apparently, this is a catalog of registration of foreigners. A cyclist in black glasses and a khaki shirt is standing by the side of the road. And I realize that this is the same cyclist who passed me over an hour ago. He looks intently in my direction.

We have to go to the hotel, - says the translator.

Internet and Cellular

The Internet that is shown to foreigners resembles a local network, which used to be popular in residential areas. It connected several quarters, and there they exchanged films and music. Koreans do not have access to the global Internet.

You can access the internal network from your smartphone - there is even a North Korean messenger. But there is nothing special. However, cellular communication has only been available for residents of the country for only ten years.

The internal Internet of the DPRK is no place for fun. There are sites public institutions, universities and organizations. All resources are reviewed by the Ministry of State Security. The DPRK does not have its own bloggers or truth-tellers on the Internet.

Memes, social networks, swearing in the comments are alien concepts of the capitalist world. I looked around different computer classes. Some work on Windows, some on Linux. But not a single computer can go online. Although the browsers there are well-known, and there is even a local DPRK browser. But search histories are not site names, but collections of IP addresses. Although the Internet for journalists is: global, fast and insanely expensive.

dog dinner

Koreans eat dogs. South Koreans are a little ashamed of this. But in the north they are proud of it. To all indignant remarks, they ask why eating a dog is worse than eating a beef cutlet, pork kebab or lamb soup. Goats, sheep and cows are also cute pets. As are dogs.

For Koreans, dog meat is not only exotic, but also healing. According to tradition, it was eaten in the heat, in the midst of field work "to expel heat from the body." Here, apparently, the principle of "knocking out a wedge with a wedge" works: a spicy and spicy stew from dog meat burned the body so much that relief followed and it became easier to work.

Koreans do not eat all dogs - and pets are not sent under the knife. Although the dog (with or without an owner) was not seen on the streets of Pyongyang. Dogs for the table are grown on special farms. And for foreigners served in the hotel cafe. They are not on the regular menu, but you can ask. The dish is called Tangogi. They bring dog broth, fried and spicy dog ​​meat, as well as a set of sauces. All this must be mixed and eaten with rice. You can drink hot tea. However, Koreans often wash down everything with rice vodka.

The taste of the dog, if you try to describe the dish, is reminiscent of spicy and fresh lamb. The dish, to be honest, is insanely spicy, but very tasty - forgive me especially scrupulous dog breeders.

Souvenir, magnet, poster

A souvenir from the DPRK is a strange combination in itself. It seems that from such a closed and regulated country it is impossible to bring sweet tourist pleasures. In fact, it is possible, but not much. Firstly, fans of ginseng will feel at ease in the DPRK. In the country, everything is made from it: teas, vodka, medicines, cosmetics, seasonings.

Fans of alcoholic beverages do not particularly roam. Strong alcohol - or specific, like rice vodka, giving, according to people who know, a strong hangover. Or exotic, like drinks with a snake or a seal's penis. Drinks like beer exist in two or three varieties and are not much different from the average Russian samples. Grape wine is not produced in the DPRK, there is plum wine.

There are catastrophically few types of magnets in the DPRK, more precisely, one - with the state flag. No other pictures - neither with leaders, nor with sights - will decorate your refrigerator. But you can buy a figurine: "a monument to the ideas of Juche" or a flying horse Chollima (accent on the last syllable) - this is such a North Korean Pegasus that carries the ideas of Juche. There are also stamps and postcards - there you can just find images of leaders. The famous badges with Kims, unfortunately, are not for sale. The badge with the national flag is the only prey of a foreigner. In general, and all - the range is not great.

Exotic lovers can buy a souvenir passport of the DPRK. This is certainly a nomination for the most original dual citizenship.

bright tomorrow

It seems that the DPRK is now on the verge of great changes. What they will be is unknown. But it seems that reluctantly, a little frightened, the country is opening up. The rhetoric and attitude to the outside world are changing.

On the one hand, the DPRK authorities continue to build their inhabited island. Fortress-state, closed from all external forces. On the other hand, they are talking more and more not about the struggle to the bitter end and to the last soldier, but about the well-being of the people. And the people are drawn to this well-being.

Three Koreans are sitting at the next cafe table and drinking. They are in nondescript gray trousers. In plain polo shirts. Above the heart of each is a badge with leaders. And on the hand of the one who is closer, a Swiss watch is golden. Not the most expensive - at a price of a couple of thousand euros.

But with an average salary in the DPRK, this accessory will have to work for a couple of lives without days off. And only Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il live forever. However, the owner of the watch wears them calmly, perceiving them as something normal. For him, this is already a new, established reality in the country of Juche.

Of course, in a society of demonstrative universal equality, there are always those who are much more equal. But it seems that the country is facing a closed door to a new world. For a long time, the people of the DPRK have been frightened by this world, but in the near future they may have to open this door and face the new world one on one.